East European political leaders and their media allies have attacked ‘politically correct’ Germans in the wake of the New Year’s Eve migrant sex assaults in Cologne and other cities, labelling the assailants “nothing but hyenas”.

In a huge “we told you so” gesture, politicians from across Eastern Europe have turned their fire on the German state’s welcoming and tolerant attitude to the migrant crisis. Having warned Chancellor Merkel that her actions and the politically correct tyranny of media opinion risked bringing Europe to ruin, they now feel vindicated by events in Cologne, reports Spiegel Online.

Robert Fico, the left-nationalist Prime Minister of Slovakia, told a televised debate that the media plays down the problem as migrants are a “protected species”. Using Cologne to support his argument, he has called for an urgent EU summit to deal with the cultural and security issues thrown up by the ongoing migrant crisis, including the creation of “parallel societies”.

Mr. Fico said Slovakia would not tolerate women being insulted in the streets, nor insular Muslim communities. In his support, Slovakian media outlets slammed the politically correct media in Germany and a naive “subculture of do-gooders”.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán feels equally vindicated. He used the occasion of his weekly radio broadcast to speak of the crisis in liberalism that meant reporting the sex assaults in Cologne had been suppressed in Germany. He said it showed that the media is more free to speak in Hungary than in the West, and that his government is right to be calling for a halt to immigration.

The strongest language was used by Zsolt Bayer, a friend of Mr. Orbán and co-founder of his Fidesz Party. Writing for Magyar Hirlap the journalist known for his trenchantly right-wing views described the Cologne assailants as “North African and Arabic animals – nothing but hyenas”. He added that Mrs. Merkel is letting her family and children get eaten by them.

Another Hungarian media outlet wrote:

“There are no bastards on this earth more abominable and more destructive than these liberal pigs who are digging Europe’s grave.”

In Romania, former President Traian Basescu said his country, like other Eastern European nations, would oppose a European Union quota system for refugees. He said Muslim migrants were brought up in the spirit of the Koran and could not adapt to European culture.

The leading Conservative-Liberal Romanian MEP Traian Ungureanu has described Mrs. Merkel and her open-door invitation to Germany as the “disaster of the century”. He also criticised “official censorship” of the events of Cologne he says prevails in Germany, adding:

“Every protest, every hint against gang rape is immediately classified as racism or extremism. It is the duty of public bodies to hide the facts and to deny.”